There are 11 items tagged:Sandy Tolan

The Homelands Blog

In his latest story from North Dakota for the Los Angeles Times, Sandy Tolan asks what we can expect now that the Army Corps of Engineers has declined to approve a permit that Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Dakota …

The Homelands Blog

Sandy Tolan’s new book, Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land will be published in April by Bloomsbury USA. Sandy will launch the book on April 21 at the Los Angeles Public Library, then head out on …

Mexican-American writer Luis Alberto Urrea returns to the slums of Tijuana, where he worked as a young man, to see a woman he knew as a girl. His story, for This American Life, explores the sometimes uneasy relationship between “first world” writers and their “third world” subjects.

In the late 1970s, Luis Alberto Urrea was working in the slums of Tijuana and Ana María “Negra” Calderón was a barefoot young girl, the unschooled daughter of garbage pickers. Nearly 25 years later, Luis is now a celebrated writer, winner of the American Book Award, and a tenured professor in Chicago.

Back in Tijuana, Negra is struggling to raise her children and those of her sister, who was killed by her husband. In this piece Luis travels back to Tijuana to see Negra after an absence of seven years. He explores his sometimes uneasy relationship and the obligations that “first world” writers have toward their “third world” subjects.